Summaries

7–54The Rules-Based International Order: A Historical AnalysisMarc Trachtenberg, University of California, Los AngelesThere has been a good deal of talk in recent years about the “rules-based international order”—the system of laws, agreements, principles, and institutions that, many observers say, lay at the heart of the international system that came into being after World War II. It is often argued that maintaining the rules-based order—and extending it if possible—should be a fundamental goal not just for the United States but for Western countries more generally. Those liberal internationalist arguments are supported by a number of historical claims: about how the rules-based order came into being and about the role played by key institutions, such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the Bretton Woods monetary system. Those claims are examined here. The basic finding is that many common arguments in this area are not supported by the historical evidence. That finding serves as a kind of springboard for thinking about whether there are any viable alternatives to the sort of policy the liberal internationalists have called for. The argument here is that there are viable alternatives—alternatives based on certain traditional ideas about how foreign policy should be conducted.55–94U.S. Space Power and Alliance Dynamics in the Cold WarAaron Bateman, George Washington UniversityU.S. space power has long been anchored to terrestrial geography. In the Cold War, the United States depended on a global network of facilities to track and communicate with military, intelligence, and civilian satellites. But it was difficult to secure access to foreign territories that were both in view of satellites as they passed overhead and politically reliable. Drawing on declassified Australian, British, and U.S. documents, this article details the largely invisible role of allies in U.S. space power. To mitigate the political challenges associated with basing space facilities in non-allied countries, the United States turned to Australia and Britain. But using allied territories was not risk free. Postcolonial independence movements threatened the security of tenure at key U.S. space tracking stations located in British territories in the Indian Ocean. Moreover, Australian concerns that U.S. space facilities were nuclear targets and violated Australia’s sovereignty created a domestic political uproar that strained the U.S.-Australia alliance. Political upheaval, even in allied states, was a significant vulnerability for U.S. space capabilities. Mitigating these political risks thus became a top U.S. foreign policy priority.95–129Conventional Deterrence of Nuclear UseAdam Mount, Federation of American Scientists (2017–2024)Some academic literature and U.S. policy documents suggest that conventional deterrence is weaker than nuclear deterrence. But recent developments in U.S. policy suggest that conventional forces are assuming a larger role in deterring limited nuclear use. This article explores why and how U.S. officials may turn to conventional weapons to deter a nuclear attack. As conventional weapons are becoming increasingly capable of producing strategic effects in response to a nuclear attack, U.S. officials may be more likely to consider conventional deterrence as a credible option to deter those attacks. In some cases, U.S. officials are likely to prefer conventional options to avoid the costs, risks, and uncertainty of nuclear threats. To test the theory, the article presents the results of a series of individual, scenario-based “tabletop interviews” with former senior U.S. officials who might plausibly have been consulted on a decision about how to deter a North Korean nuclear attack. The results demonstrate that U.S. officials increasingly consider conventional deterrence of nuclear use to be a viable and valuable capability.130–161Between a Rock and a Hard Place: How Clients Evade Patrons’ Costly Strategic DemandsDong Jung Kim, Korea UniversityHow do U.S. security clients cope with the United States’ strategic demands to take actions that conflict with their political or economic interests? Much of the literature on intra-alliance politics explains clients’ decisions to accept or reject their patron’s demands. This article theorizes demand evasion as an option for a U.S. security client confronted with costly strategic requests from its patron. Demand evasion occurs when the client avoids answering the security patron’s repeated demand on a strategic issue without provoking the patron’s punishment. There are three methods of demand evasion: stalling, deferring, and slow-rolling. To decide how to respond to their patron’s strategic demand, U.S. security clients assess the patron’s internal coherence regarding the demand and the type of risks involved in the issue at stake. I illustrate the theory of demand evasion by examining how three U.S. treaty allies in the Indo-Pacific (Australia, Japan, and South Korea) responded to demands from different U.S. administrations. For U.S. leaders who seek immediate support from foreign allies, the theory is useful because it highlights the full range of options available to U.S. clients (i.e., acceptance, rejection, and evasion). Understanding why allies sometimes deliberately avoid making decisions on strategic issues is important for the United States as it seeks to confront its adversaries and protect its security interests.162–192To Agree or Not to Agree: Hawks, Doves, and Regime Type in International Rivalry and RapprochementMichael A. Goldfien, U.S. Naval War CollegeExisting scholarship emphasizes hawks’ advantages in making peace, but it is squarely focused on electorally accountable leaders, even though most international rivalries feature at least one leader who faces no meaningful electoral check. I argue that electoral accountability moderates the relationship between foreign policy preferences and rapprochement. In low electoral accountability autocracies where citizens struggle to punish leaders, the credibility problem that doves face in selling peace at home becomes less important than their motivation to cooperate internationally. As a result, doves, not hawks, should be more successful peacemakers in autocracies. I test the theory by analyzing two prominent cases of rapprochement: the end of the Cold War under Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in the late 1980s; and the end of the Egypt-Israel rivalry in the late 1970s under Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat.International Security is a peer-reviewed quarterly journal edited at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and published by the MIT Press. The journal offers a combination of professional and policy-relevant articles that strives to contribute to the analysis of contemporary, historical, and theoretical questions in security studies. International Security welcomes submissions on all aspects of security affairs and aims to provide timely analyses of contemporary security issues through contributions that reflect diverse points of view and varied professional experiences.The articles published in the journal are first circulated for doubly blind external review. 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